We are no different than computers

[JuliaL]

I guess what I mean is one of two aspects of the mind-body problem: 1) Imagine what the world might appear like to an AI that possesses experience (or for that matter, a bat). It would undoubtedly be quite different than what we experience as "the external world." If mind is but a physical arrangement of molecules (those also being concepts that we derive from mind), does our experience of a self that perceives distinct objects, colors, sounds, etc., and conceives of thoughts, unity, order, etc., imply that those "outside" things are also computations which exist as they appear to us only in the hardware of "like-minded" biological designs? 1a Or do those qualities take on the characters that they do because of attributes that are exclusive to their own natures and which exist independently from a creature's internal "simulation" of them, though in a manner that mental hardware can never apprehend apart from definitions (as opposed to direct or indirect experience)? I mean something like Kant's "thing-in-itself." Or 2) as the mind is a form of computation that develops its own computational systems (such as AI), is nature also a programmer in the sense that we are? Is nature at large also a form of computation? Where is the dividing line between the machine (us) and its artificer (the environment)? Does comp theory deal with that? Or is everything part of one Great Machine as Descartes proposed, and we stand as something like highly specialized programs within a "universe's hard drive"?

My bolded addition of 1a.
I really enjoy reading your posts.  I think I understand them, but only after half a dozen readings.
In this case, I'd say,
1) yes, different minds will have different perspectives of a single event.  I remember a neuroanatomy lecturer describing the sensory equipment of several animals and speculating on their viewpoints.  For instance, a catfish, living on the bottom of a river, uses its 'whiskers' for chemical, electrical and touch senses in finding small arthropods to eat with neural mappings to match. Do they (no term here in English to describe an electric sensation humans don't have) tasty?  A dolphin gains 3d information of not only the external form, as we do with binocular vision, but also the insides of their companions ("My Martha, your spleen is lovely today.")
1a) yes, because sensation is mediated, there will always be that suspicion that what we see isn't what is there.  But it can only remain a suspicion because the "thing-in-itself" is unavailable to us if it exists at all.
2) yes, but only if 'computation' is extended to include any form of regularity.  Persistence of a mass in a vacuum and a charged well in silicon may each be looked at as information storage, but they are not the same thing.  The calculations reality does with the universal wave function includes us, our environments and everything else.  But, other than by an arbitrary classification of similarity, it has nothing to do with register manipulation. I see nothing to suggest that Nature is an intentional calculator or producer of anything.